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Liam Gillick

Liam Gillick, German Pavilion at Venice Art Biennale, 2009

Born in England in 1964, Liam Gillick emphasizes his roots in postwar Europe and his consequent distrust of authority as major influences in his curatorial techniques and artistic practices. Currently working in London and New York, “engaged with the processes of the everyday,” he rejects the use of the term “contemporary art” citing it as historical and redundant.

Working in a variety of different mediums including large-scale installations, inkjet prints, and music, as well as curatorial projects and theoretical writings, Gillick’s work transcends disciplinary categories. In 2009, he was selected to represent Germany in the Venice Biennale, and he was nominated for the prestigious Turner Prize in 2002. Gillick has been the subject of numerous exhibitions, including a retrospective at the Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College in 2012, as well as solo shows at institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago (2009), Rotterdam’s Witte de With (2008), Kunsthalle Zurich (2008), the Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2005), and the Museum of Modern Art (2003). He has also contributed to magazines and journals such as Frieze, Artforum, and October.

People say “painting is dead” and within that figure painting is mummified. Since painting began, we have used the figure to let people after us know that we existed before them. This is clear when we look at cave paintings wherein the “painted” people and animals and other symbols represented life. Looking at where figurative painting is today, there is more room for creativity and imagination. Take for instance the approach of artists in this show from Erik Parker’s weirdo psychedelic melting faces to Jamison Brousseau’s take on the figure represented by R2D2 from Star Wars. Gina Beavers current approach to the figure looks like studies that would have been done by someone enrolled in the “art students league” in New York City in the 1950’s. Another interesting component of the work in this show are the materials used and the execution of the works. For example Allison Schulnik’s technique is to use paint sculpturally to create her figures. She lays on thick impastos, whereas Daniel Gordon uses photography and collage to manipulate the look and feel of his work, often leaving the figures disfigured and mangled. Denise Kupferschmidt’s drawings evoke a re-imagined historical feel with paired down, Egyptian-meets-sci-fi characters.

John Galliano for Maison Margiela, Fall 2017 Ready-to-Wear

It would take a very long time indeed to describe some of the outfits John Galliano dreamed up at Maison Margiela for Fall—and even then, the words might not help at all. Put simply: It seemed to be an exercise in cutting out pieces of clothing and layering them on top of whole garments. Sometimes only the tracery of seams remained. Nonsensical, you might say—and that’s quite true because Galliano is working at a level where the matter-of-fact language of clothing fails. To piece together what he might be getting at, you have to start opening your eyes: Literally look into the clothes, scan their every angle and texture, and switch on your emotional antennae. It was good to be pushed. This time, his innovation felt less like experimental doodling and more like a fully realized sketch with deep resonances within it.

That it was about America, there could be no doubt. A belted trenchcoat with a bra-top cut into the front turned out to have a message on the back: The Statue of Liberty’s crown was clearly silhouetted in a cutout across the storm flap. (The back view can be seen on the runway retreating in the second photo, just behind the beige pantsuit.) Galliano has never been a political designer. The wavelength he operates on is associative, poetic, and playful; but here was a symbol—liberty—which seemed to stand as a synonym for the creative freedom to mix up metaphors, materials, and fragments of cultures. He’ll look at things from new angles, always. If a furry bag suddenly looks good to him as a hat, then on it goes!

No one asks Galliano for a straightforward look-by-look narrative, but embedded in this collection were references to Marilyn Monroe, the days of the western frontier, blue-collar workers, corporate suiting, the military, and the multiple ethnicities and religions America (and the world) contains. At the beginning, there was Monroe’s oversize sweater, the remnants of Joe DiMaggio’s baseball jacket, and a shadowy blown-up print of her face on a shift dress. Further along: a knitted dress patterned like an American quilt, layered over a dotted organdy dress, and decorated with peacock feathers.

What might have been an over-cheeky mess—this is sometimes the case with Galliano—was calmed down by the presence of so many exceptional, wearable pieces. Along the way, there was a clear view of a pair of jeans with a fabulously sexy high-waist fit, incredible coats, and a brilliant retake on Margiela’s surrealist footwear: boots with half-detached kitten heels. The message, then? Surely a gentle one: that this is (and must remain) an inclusive world. Just one note to Galliano, though: Of 31 girls, there was only one black model on his runway. That is something he (and all designers) needs to rectify.

Christian Dior, Fall 2015, Ready-to-Wear, Paris, 2015

Throbbing Gristle’s “Hot on the Heels of Love,” the piece of music that soundtracked the Christian Dior show today, has a chilly, slaphappy Fifty Shades quality that seemed tailor-made for a collection whose animal essence was fulsomely described by Raf Simons as “something more liberated, darker, more sexual.” Something more than Dior’s femme fleur, in other words.

But it was also more commercial than anything Simons has offered before, in any of his guises. And saying that is no insult, because it underscores the confidence the designer has acquired in his time at Dior. He could backseat those curvaceous Bar-shaped classics in favor of man-tailored tweed pantsuits—double-breasted jackets and cropped, cuffed pants—and liquid mesh pieces that second-skinned the body. There was a nod to heritage in animal prints—Christian Dior introduced leopard print in 1947—but Simons’ homage was a blown-out reinterpretation that was so abstract as to look psychedelic…or maybe embryonic, emblematic of new life in the jacquard of a body stocking that Simons carried over from Couture.

That actually seemed like an apt metaphor for the whole collection. Simons talked about “a new kind of camouflage,” but what was it that was truly hidden here? Sex, of course. Sublimated under big, desirable tweed coats, in abbreviated coatdresses paired with thigh-high vinyl boots (go there!), in shifts collaged from fox with a tinge of unnatural nature. There was elegance and there was oddity in this collection—exactly what you’d expect from Raf Simons. But salability? Ah, yes, that was the news.

Shelter Press is a Paris / Brussels based independent publishing company founded in 2011 and run by the publisher / graphic designer Bartolomé Sanson and the artist / musician Felicia Atkinson, from the fundaments of Kaugummi Books (2005-2011).

Their publishing program focuses on contemporary art, writings, and experimental music through art books, mutliples and records.

The name Shelter has been chosen as a reference to the californian thinker and generous mind LLoyd Kahn who published in the 70′s DIY masterpieces The Dome Book and Shelter.

Swedish photographer Sophie Mörner founded Capricious Magazine in 2004. It is a biannual publication dedicated to showcasing emerging fine art photography. Its contributors and subject matter span the globe and is comprised almost entirely of images. Since Capricious collaborates with guest editors and chooses a new theme for each edition, the material is never lackluster. And while constant change is a primary Capricious trait, there are also definite common visual threads running throughout its history. Capricious has an affinity for things like animals, androgyny, opposition, reclaimed life, lust, natural as well as urban life, intimacy, revolution and nostalgia. Hanna Liden, Ryan McGinley, Esther Teichmann, Nick Haymes, Olaf Breuning, Melanie Bonajo and Skye Parrott are just a few of the dozens of photographers whose early work has been promoted by presence in Capricious. As a leading fine art photography journal, Capricious Magazine occupies a rare and whimsical space between commercial and fashion photography; it operates as both a tool for discovering new talent and as an artists’ oasis.

Capricious Magazine was the first-born and led to several other art and culture-related publications. Capricious Publishing has since produced GLU (Girls Like Us), LTTR V, Famous and Screen Capricious (a DVD compilation of short films). Capricious Books is the group’s latest endeavor. The first was “The Known World,” a photographic collaboration by Anne Hall and Sophie Mörner, released in November 2008, and the second is a monograph, also of photographic work, by Dutch artist Melanie Bonajo, “I Have a Room With Everything.” In 2009, Emmeline de Mooij created “Muddy” and in 2010, with AK Burns, Capricious published the first issue of RANDY magazine (a brand new lesbian culture zine). This year Capricious will work together with K8 Hardy to publish her first artist monograph.

Capricious Presents: is a roving curatorial project. Founded in June 2008 as an offshoot of fine art photography publication Capricious Magazine, our exhibitions serve as a physical venues for work of the same “capricious” aesthetic. Our mission is to provide sanctuary away from the city’s clamor and strife. Capricious works with emerging artists and to transform spaces according to their own visions and dreams, thus bringing the Capricious generation together.